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Monday, October 11, 2010

10/10/10 Ayala to MOA. We survived the 10K of the Run for Pasig River! I expected a lot of people but I did not foresee the impact of having that much people in one place. :P

Tey and I decided to run together because we knew it will be very difficult to look for each other in a sea of 120,000 heads. We went to Ayala via MRT, which offered free rides for runners. That was really awesome!

I would say the starting area was very organized. Water stations, baggage areas, and portalets, were readily accessible. We were divided into clusters because of the great number of participating runners. Tey and I were at Cluster 2, which was close enough to the stage for us to recognize Piolo Pascual (to Tey's maximum kiligness). [Manny Pacquiao and Santino were also among the celebrities who were at the 10k stage].

Our goal was 1hr 15mins for this 10k. We reached the 5k marker at 00:37:30 which was exactly halfway through our target time. Between 5k and 6k (that was already at Roxas Blvd), we were met by the 5k runners, making the road a little more congested.

At 1hr 15mins, we were only somewhere between 8k and 9k so we missed our target by a around 1.5k. At least, we thought, we could still finish with a decent time.

Little did we know that our run for Pasig River was about to be cut short. The MOA globe and the street towards the Finish Line were the bottlenecks where all the runners. We walked the last 8.5k. Slow, tiring, walk.

We reached the finish line 22 minutes later. I stopped my watch at 1 hr 37 minutes when we cross the finish line. [There was another finish line ahead which was very confusing].

The finisher's band has a very simple design but it looks pretty cool.

There were a lot of marshals but I personally didn't feel that the number was enough to accommodate that number of runners. Anyway, I salute the volunteers for accomplishing their tasks well even though they were definitely outnumbered.

Frantic finisher's band claimers handled coolly by the volunteers.

I'm not sure if we broke the world record but I have a feeling we did. :P

Chillaxing after a tiring walk around MOA looking for a place to buy food from.